Chakato (Jakato �àkàtɔ̀or Jakattoe) is a West Chadic language spoken in

Plateau State Plateau is a northern states of Nigeria, Nigerian state. It is located in the north-central geopolitical zone of Nigeria and includes a range of hills surrounding the Jos Plateau. Plateau State is described as "The Home of Peace and Tourism". Th ...

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

. It was identified by

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ...

in 2016.Blench, Roger. 2017.
Current research on the A3 West Chadic languages
'. It is spoken by about 500 people in one village, Dokan Tofa, which is located on the

Jos Jos is a city in the North-Central region of Nigeria. The city has a population of about 900,000 residents based on the 2006 census. Popularly called "J-Town", it is the administrative capital and largest city of Plateau State. The city is situ ...

Shendam Shendam is a Local Government Area in Plateau State, Nigeria. Its headquarters are in the town of Shendam. It is bordered by Ibi Taraba State to the south, Qua'an Pan to the east, Pankshin to the north, and Mikang to the west. Shendam town is ...

road in

. Blench (2017) suggests that Chakato may be related to spurious records of the Jorto language. Chakato speakers claim that their language is closely related to Goemai. Jakato is spoken in Dokan Tofa town and nearby villages in southern

. Dokan Tofa town is situated about 50 km north of

Jorto

Jorto is a putative

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of th ...

language claimed to be spoken in

, and is currently listed in ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

''. It was introduced in an ethnographic study by C. G. Ames in 1934. It has now been retired by ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

'', based on fieldwork evidence presented by

that suggests that there is no independent evidence that Jorto ever existed. On the other hand, a request to retire Jorto's ISO 639-3 jrt code was rejected because a team in Nigeria surveyed a region, that although they call their language as "Jakattoe", the "Jorto" is used by a neighboring people group. But the status of jrt code itself is later temporary changed to "Deprecated" in later 2020. In Jan 15, 2021, the SIL restored the jrt and changed its reference name to Jakattoe.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chakato language Languages of Nigeria West Chadic languages Spurious languages